X-Series got the police force that sometimes scans your freight and when they detect something unusual, they attack you. Each race had their own police, though. But it was kinda universal.

And Freelance...I think you had some police there too. It was reace/large faction related again, yeah.

Okay, I give you that one. They were faction based. You're right. But they didn't work for one company or something. They weren't private security forces, hired by one company. They were official police forces. Not universal, though. So, no Interpol. But lots of things like Europol and FBI, that enforced law in a large portion of the universe.

I'm also in the camp that feels a universal globo-cop "faction" doesn't really fit the kind of procedural-faction game that LT was described as.

I think it will be fine to let local factions handle their own policing. The simplest version of this: factions that are capable of shipbuilding will allocate some of their military vessels to commercial protection.

You could make it more complicated than that. Sufficiently large factions could gain "government" status, perhaps spanning several star systems, and build police ships, which are different from military ships, to enforce law and order generally rather than only as muscle for protecting commercial activity. I don't think that creates a substantively different gameplay experience, though, just in terms of how NPC piracy (and thus the value of IFF spoofing/disabling as game features) causes NPC protective behaviors to emerge.

As long as a local faction can "decide" that too much of its cargo (or ship fleet) is being lost to piracy, and choose to allocate some of its military ships to commercial defense operations, that seems like a sufficiently practical game design solution to me. IFF spoofing/disabling can happen, but it's held in check where it should be by emergent factional behavior that's plausible for LT.

Flatfingers wrote:I'm also in the camp that feels a universal globo-cop "faction" doesn't really fit the kind of procedural-faction game that LT was described as.

I think it will be fine to let local factions handle their own policing. The simplest version of this: factions that are capable of shipbuilding will allocate some of their military vessels to commercial protection.

You could make it more complicated than that. Sufficiently large factions could gain "government" status, perhaps spanning several star systems, and build police ships, which are different from military ships, to enforce law and order generally rather than only as muscle for protecting commercial activity. I don't think that creates a substantively different gameplay experience, though, just in terms of how NPC piracy (and thus the value of IFF spoofing/disabling as game features) causes NPC protective behaviors to emerge.

As long as a local faction can "decide" that too much of its cargo (or ship fleet) is being lost to piracy, and choose to allocate some of its military ships to commercial defense operations, that seems like a sufficiently practical game design solution to me. IFF spoofing/disabling can happen, but it's held in check where it should be by emergent factional behavior that's plausible for LT.

This is basically how I see it also.
There would be many things that would be basically universally Illegal for "above board" groups (not pirates)
Like always having IFF on, not shooting the faction or her allies. (Factions she is neutral towards are typically free game, and murdering hostiles is encouraged.)

Having large factions controlling whats legal and illegal based on their culture vector, allows you to do smuggling, to be a pirate in some places, and a freedom fighter in others.
It basically gives you the game.

Without factional control over areas, or with a universal police, you lose too much of that for the game to be interesting. (EVE only managed to be interesting because pissing people off is fun for some people)